For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-
old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully
sued the McDonald's in New Mexico where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right?
That's right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and
verdicts in the U.S. You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head.

So keep your head scratcher handy. Here are the Stella's for the
past year:

7TH PLACE :
Kathleen Robertson of Austin , Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was
running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably
surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6TH PLACE :
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles , California won $74,000 plus medical
expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord.
Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.? Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.

5TH PLACE :
Terrence Dickson, of Bristol , Pennsylvania , who was leaving a house
he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut

Forced to sit for EIGHT days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish.
Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson
$500,000 for his anguish. We should all have this kind of anguish.? Keep scratching.
There are more...

4TH PLACE :
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock, Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the
Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.? Grrrrr...
Scratch,
scratch.

3RD PLACE :
Amber Carson of Lancaster , Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a
Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a
spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions????

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Hang in n there; there are
only two more Stellas to go...

2ND PLACE :
Kara Walton, of Claymont , Delaware sued the owner of a night club in
a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor,
knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000.....oh, yeah, plus dental expenses. Go figure.

1ST PLACE ? (May I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please)
This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv
Grazinski,of Oklahoma City , Oklahoma , who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich.
Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and
overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her (are you sitting down)
$1,750,000 ~~ PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

These are just sad. Even worse is that they're all reward these prizes by juries. Where are the reasonable people of the world!!!???!!! _________________I use multi-billion dollar military satellite systems to find Tupperware in the forest.

WOW is both my own and my husband's reaction to this. It is crazy that these people won!
Life is so unfair!
My husband tried to help an abused woman a couple years ago by telling the abuser to go home and sleep it off. In return he got smashed with a beer bottle across one side of his head and lost 80% of his hearing in that ear plus has a permanent scar on his face. Victim services paid him for the scar and AFTER providing him with a hearing aid decided he did not deserve any money for the permanent hearing loss as they felt he could not prove the loss was from the incident. GRRR.

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